1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electrical connector having a plug-in face with a mating electrical connector, which is provided in a peripheral wall of a housing and extends in a plug-in direction of the connector.
2. Description of the Related Art
This kind of electrical connector is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Kokai Number 2002-33150. It discloses a board-side connector, which is fixed to a circuit board, and a cable connector, which is plugged-in the board-side connector and furnished with a cable. The housing of the board-side connector has an appearance of a substantially rectangular parallelepiped. The housing comprises a hollow opened upwardly for receiving the cable connector or a mating connector. One of four sidewalls forming the hollow is opened sideways within the full range of the depth of the hollow. When the cable connector is plugged-in the board-side connector from the above, the cable of the cable connector extends from a side opening of the hollow of the board-side connector.
Since, as described above, one of the four sidewalls of the hollow of the board-side connector is opened sideways widely, the cable connector is guided by the plug-in faces formed on the internal surfaces of the remaining three sidewalls of the hollow. Since the three plug-in faces are formed in the same range of height, the plug-in between both the connectors starts and finishes simultaneously at the three plug-in faces.
The plug-in face that is long in the plug-in direction is generally preferable. Especially, when the cable of the cable connector extends sideways, since part of the peripheral wall of the housing is opened for extension of the cable, the plug-in face becomes small in area. Accordingly, a lengthy plug-in face is required to secure large area for the plug-in. In the example in Patent Document 1, since the three plug-in faces are provided in the same range in the plug-in direction, the plug-in operation starts and finishes simultaneously at all the plug-in faces. Accordingly, if a connector with large dimension in the plug-in direction is acceptable, a large plug-in length is allowed. However, if a small dimension of connector is required, the plug-in length becomes too large.